


A Silver Dragon on a Red Lake

by Sookiestark



Series: Dragons and Their Riders [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dragons, Genderfluid Character, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 00:52:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19346212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sookiestark/pseuds/Sookiestark
Summary: Brief thoughts of Silverwing as they near death on Red Lake





	A Silver Dragon on a Red Lake

They spend their last days on Red Lake; eating cranes and watching a little girl named Scarlett sing songs and get brave enough to come close. Scarlett’s people do not care for her or they would keep her from me. After all, an untethered dragon is always hungry. A riderless dragon does not care for human children except to eat. They thought she must be a silly fool of a child but Scarlett is fearless. It reminds them of another girl so many years ago. 

They have thought of flying to Dragonstone and hatching a clutch of eggs. But they do not think they could bear to go to Dragonstone again. Alysanne is gone and more. Vermithor is gone now. The fierce bronze beast that bore the greatest Targaryen King ever, Jaehaerys the Wise. But their love is gone and they stay here in their solitude and grief at Red Lake. Alysanne took them here once long ago. Her husband, the King, surveyed the land with other lords, all dressed in their finery. Her Alysanne’s children were young then. Sometimes, she would take them with her on their back to fly in the clouds, to teach them to be fearless. Now all of Alysanne’s children and grandchildren are dead. Silverwing’s children are dead as well. It is a terrible thing for a parent to outlive their children. 

But when Alysanne brought them here to Red Lake, the girt was young as they were. It was spring or summer, a warm and ripe world. Alysanne had loved it. As they had flown together, skimming through the currents of air, Alyssanne had called to me without words. The way she and they would do. Faster she had told them in their heart, in their head. Alysanne had thought this would be a fine place to live. And so when all the world burned and all their love was cold ash, Silverwing came here to live beside this lake. To die here with the loons calling their long sad cries. The sunrise, pink and purple, painting the sky, as a little girl named Scarlett sings them songs. 

They are tired and old. Still, they refuse to die. Not yet. Once, Silverwing referred to themselves as she. Alysanne always called her she and her. Alysanne was her mother and did her best to care for them. She imprinted gender on her and for many years, she was a she. But Silverwing knows it is silly, a purely human thing to have a gender that is fixed. When Alyssanne slipped from this world, she took their thoughts of she and her with her. Her sweet pretty blue-eyed girl... She.. The sound it makes like a wind over water. like the slip of breath between her tongue, like the feel of Alyssanne’s hand against their cheek.

Silverwing is dying and their breath is rotten. Some of their razor-sharp teeth have fallen out. One of them, the little girl who comes and visits her, wears tied around a ribbon under her dress. If they had been young, their teeth would have been so sharp that it would cut even lying gently against the girl’s skin. But their teeth like their spirit has been worn down by the years and now even a girl child can wear them near her heart. 

The girl’s name is Scarlett. Scarlett Flowers. Her father is Lord Crane and she is his bastard daughter. It is one of the reasons she is allowed to roam so freely. They wonder if the humans know the child comes to them every day. She is a Flowers, a bastard like Ulf, and Hugh, and Nettles. She reminds them of Nettles. 

Silverwing likes the child. Their first rider was a girl about Scarlett’s age and they find it comforting to hear a girl’s voice.

 

They always miss Alysanne but there is a huge ache when they think of Vermithor. They were their constant bronze shadow, their constant companion in all the years of their life. When we had no riders, we had each other. So many things about them, Silverwing misses their roar, their breath, their glowing eyes of molten bronze, always glowing, even in the dark, especially in the dark. There seemed to be a fire in them. Vermithor was the fire of Old Valyria reborn. They were the volcano, the heat under the earth, the heat in my heart's blood.

Before the war, there were lazy days where Verimothor and they would curl in fields of clover in the red grass outside the city or play in the bay. They had clutches of eggs, all hatched, all healthy, Seasmoke, Sunfyre, Caraxes, Stormcloud, mine, all mine. Now they are all bones.

Silverwing was told by Scarlett that Alysanne’s great-great-grandchildren keep my children's skulls in their throne room. They thought to go and burn them for such insolence. Scarlett told them that where Vermithor died people would pay a penny to see their skull. Silverwing let their anger scatter on the lake like cranes. After all, Vermithor was dead. 

Back in those lazy days before the war, Vermithor would say to Silverwing, proudly, “Remember when the King rode on me. A king will sit on my back again. We will ride in glory again.”

When Vermithor spoke these words, Silverwing wondered if they had been bonded with their riders too long. A dragon does not care for a steel throne. A dragon has dominion over kings regardless who sits on their back. 

Silverwing would roar back at Vermithor, teasing that they would be as old and daft as Balerion, who would only speak of how they were the strongest and fiercest of them all. They who were born in the volcanos of Old Valyria. They who were known as the Black Dread. They who were Fire and Blood, born into life. But then, Balerion could barely fly and they could not see. Balerion was a frail old thing. All they had were stories. 

 

Scarlett has a bit of old blood of Valyria. Silverwing does not care to even think how but it sings to them with every heartbeat, just a faint ring. Once Silverwing thought to have her climb on their back. But the girl is still too young to dare to try such a thing.

At first, when the girl came to the edge of the lake, Silverwing had thought to eat her, to burn her with fire. But they had heard the ring of Valyrian songs in the child’s heartbeat. Instead, they watched her. The girl was not cared for well and it had something to do with her birth. Her mother had been taken from her and she was left in the care of Lord Crane who would rather Scarlett disappear.

Silverwing likes this girl of birds and flowers. She can slip inside birds sometimes and make them do as she wishes, warg the fat cranes that lounge around the lake and make them take to the sky. Scarlett does not care what Lord Crane thinks of her. She had come to see the dragon at Red Lake, barefoot and mostly wild. Silverwing understood what orphaned children felt. They felt it. They felt a feeling of deep lonely sorrow. 

They miss their riders, Alyssanne more than Ulf, the silly man and his fermented grape drink. Silverwing missed Alyssanne, ached for her. Sometimes, they would still roar in grief over the loss of her. The cranes would dash across the water away from them. It almost made them happy to see the birds scatter from them as if they could escape from Silverwing if they wanted them dead.

That is why they like watching the girl in the water, building forts and splashing. She was fearless. She was strong like Alysanne. Scarlett. 

 

The magic of the world is waning. Balerion lived for almost three hundred years. Vhagar lived for two hundred and they have lived for a little over a 100 years but already Silverwing feels the weight of old age. They are last. The world and men are poisoning us, squeezing us out of the word to make it safer, to make it reasonable, logical. What a dull place the world will be without giants, wargs, wizards, and dragons? The eggs will no longer quicken. Soon, they will fade from the world as legends. But until that happens, Silverwing will sit on the lake and think on their memories and wait for the girl to visit.


End file.
